For This Class, Professors Pass Screen Tests

Trend to share what you know on camera requiring now requiring higher skill levels..

The Great Courses Require Great Production

Alisha Reay helps get Ron Davis Jr. camera-ready for the Great Courses filming.Credit
Vanessa Vick for The New York Times

Attention,
college professors: If you aspire to film a lecture series for the
Great Courses, the extended-learning outfit here, be prepared to check
your idiosyncrasies at the door.

“I
had a professor who liked to rest his finger on his face,” Alisha Reay,
a producer at the company, recalled, demonstrating the tic. “And he
liked to use his middle finger.”

In
two television-quality studios here, the company puts academics and
other experts in front of cameras to record courses on a wide range of
subjects — game theory, photography, ancient civilizations, differential
equations, cooking with spices. The courses are aimed at people who
want to further their education just for the sake of the knowledge (no
tests or college credit here), but the filming process is an education,
too, for the expert being filmed.

“If
I’m going too fast for my students, I can see it in their eyes,” Ron
Davis Jr., a chemistry professor at Georgetown University, said during a
break from his first taping session for Foundations of Organic
Chemistry recently. “But these cameras don’t react.”

Photo

Prof. Ron Davis Jr. of Georgetown University preparing to film a chemistry course.Credit
Vanessa Vick for The New York Times

The company
was founded in 1990, at first marketing audiotapes, and in June
released its 500th course (Understanding Modern Electronics). It has
been busy of late, entering into partnerships with National Geographic
to expand on a popular photography course, the Culinary Institute of
America to develop a cooking series, and the Smithsonian Institution. It
recently sold its 15 millionth course.

Ed
Leon, the senior vice president for product development, said customers
for the courses, which range from less than $40 to several hundred
dollars and come in video or audio formats, might be broadening their
knowledge of a particular country in preparation for a trip, enhancing a
job skill or simply expanding their minds.

“We
have binge watchers like Netflix does,” he said, “and it’s a real badge
of honor among some of our regulars to be the first to finish a new
course.”

The
extended-learning world grows more competitive all the time, with
online colleges and iTunes entering the mix. The company tries to stay
competitive with a production process that is more sophisticated than
simply taping professors delivering their classroom lectures. Instead,
the Great Courses staff comes up with ideas for courses, tests them out
through surveys, then looks for a professor who can develop that course.
A screen test might be involved, and, yes, sometimes a professor
flunks.

“That’s always a difficult conversation,” Mr. Leon said.

The professors who do make the grade often need a little help to become camera-friendly.

“There
have been times when we had to write ‘Breathe’ or ‘Pause’ under the
cameras,” Marcy McDonald, senior director of content, said. One
professor had the crew members tape pictures of people under the
cameras, so he felt as if he were talking to someone.

And
plenty of professors need to be told to stop swaying. “That’s the most
common thing,” Ms. Reay said, "and the camera magnifies it.

In
addition to professors who have to be purged of classroom habits that
don’t work on screen, an increasing challenge for the Great Courses
staff is professors who don’t know how to lecture at all. The “flipped
classroom” model that is taking hold in academia — in-class time is
devoted to hands-on activity rather than one-way instruction — means
that some professors have little experience with organizing and
delivering a traditional 30-minute talk.

“Now, fewer and fewer people lecture,” Ms. McDonald said. “That’s making it harder for us.”

A
lot of the performance kinks are worked out in practice sessions, but
the tapings are still a learning process at first. The filming is done
with three cameras, so professors have to know which one to talk to, and
when. Graphics, often elaborate, will be added in postproduction, so
the professors also have to become accustomed to gesturing at something
that isn’t there. Many work from a teleprompter, which also takes some
getting used to. And there’s the clock.

“Rule
No. 1 is, ‘Pause, pause, pause,’ and I’m looking at the clock and
saying, ‘I can’t pause,’ ” Dr. Davis said after his first try, which he
brought in at 35 minutes 34 seconds, a little long. Professors usually
end up reshooting that first lecture after they have become more
comfortable with the process, an adjustment Dr. Davis will certainly
make: His course will ultimately consist of 36 half-hour lessons.

That same day, Paul Robbins, director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, showed the benefit of
experience, zipping through the 21st installment of his 24-lecture
course on cultural and human geography in 29:48.

Developing
a course of that length is a significant commitment, Dr. Robbins noted,
and for the Great Courses audience, it requires shedding academic
jargon.

“It
means writing a textbook, and writing a really good textbook in plain
language,” he said. “I’m thinking with a playwright’s hat rather than as
a talking head.”

Not
that the process lacks academic rigor. As the professors tape, staff
members in a control room listen, and not in that zoned-out way you
absorbed lectures when you were in school. They have to catch
mispronunciations, garble, dropped words and more, so that the flubs can
be fixed in postproduction. If the speaker leaves out a “not,” a law of
physics can be radically altered.

For
the lecturers, a Great Courses assignment pays off in royalties, which
can stretch for years, since the courses stay in the catalog for some
time. But there are also less tangible benefits.

“It
had a transformative effect on me as a teacher,” said Jennifer Paxton,
who teaches at the Catholic University of America and has recorded two
history courses for the company and is working on a third. “One of the
things they told me is that I should not hold back from really
demonstrating the enthusiasm that I felt for the material. I think that,
in a sense, I had drunk the academic Kool-Aid: You present something in
a serious, sober manner.”

For instance, her Great Courses coaches encouraged her to demonstrate graphically what happened in a medieval battle.

“It
was really like being unchained,” she said. “That experience was very
profound. I came out and demonstrated the act of chopping the head off a
horse. I had never done anything like that in lectures before.”

Robert Greenberg,
by far the most prolific Great Courses instructor, with 618 lectures in
the can, said that the course he was working on now would take him a
year to develop, but that the effort pays off in front of cameras.

“The
beauty of all that prep is, I walk into the studio, and that’s the fun
part,” he said. “What is for some people the worst part, and that is the
recording, is for me a great pleasure.”

How often do you hear someone say, "Oh, at one time unions were a good thing, but not anymore"?

The premise of this argument is that once upon a time there were robber barons stalking the land, and it was a fine thing that workers organized into unions to prevent them from hiring children and paying employees a pittance as they labored in sweatshops working fifteen-hour days.

Now, goes the narrative, in the age of high-tech industrial campuses and "information" workers, unions are "obsolete."

Next time you hear that argument from an otherwise rational person, give them a good shake and insist that they wake up from their dream world.

The central problem facing the American economy -- and our society -- is the collapse of the American middle class. The incomes of the middle class Americans, and those who aspire to be middle class -- 90% of Americans -- have been stagnant for almost three decades. This trend, which was briefly interrupted during the Clinton Administration, is the chief defining characteristic of our recent economic history.

This stagnation of middle class incomes has not happened because our economy has failed to grow over this period. In fact, real (adjusted for inflation) per capita gross domestic product (GDP) increased more than 80% over the period between 1975 and 2005. In the last ten years, before the Great Recession, it increased at an average rate of 1.8% per year. That means that if the benefits of economic growth were equally spread throughout our society, everyone should have been almost 20% better off (with compounding) in 2008 than they were in 1998.

But they weren't better off. In fact, median family income actually dropped in the years before the recession. It went from $52,301 (in 2009 dollars) in 2000 to $50,112 in 2008. And, of course it continued to drop as the recession set in.

From a student:One of these characters actually supported unions initially...or he wouldn't have made it to power. It is important to understand that all "ultimate power seeking" individuals and groups always say they support the "common man or worker" thru unions, strong nationalism (think of a country in itself as a union), or collectives. They all say this in public, even if their actual actions (use of brownshirts or blackshirts to suppress opposition) is what they really believe in. Also, who is it in our government that "has taken dictatorial power" and now wants to dissolve trade unions AND collective bargaining? Are you trying to paint certain elected officials (like Walker) as dictators? If so, why don't you just come and say it rather than beating around the bush? That sure seems to be the implied message once you read the student comment pasted below the comment in blue. Very sneaky...and devious game you are playing!!! Anyone with any brains in a political position knows that it is political suicide to suggest disbanding unions in this day and time. Therefore, it is logical/reasonable that someone, or a group "not in a dictatorial position" would most certainly "not support or suggest disbanding unions". As for collective bargaining, that's a moot point if the union's disbanded anyway. Some Hitler history: In 1933, Hitler disbanded the Weimar unions and replaced them with the new and improved union, the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), which was comprised of 2 primary entities, the National Socialist Factory Organization and the National Socialist Trade and Industry Organization. The labor contracts that were Weimar contracts were now DAF-honored contracts. The Nazi’s funded the DAF’s coffers with the Weimar unions’ stockpile of wealth (the existing unions were part of that inflation problem). One of the new unions’ most popular programs was the Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF)) program, which developed the KdF-wagen, that later became the Volkswagen, or People’s Car. The primary goal of Germany’s national socialists (Nazi Party) was to “create a classless” society. Hitler’s unions were front and center in this cause. In fact, Hitler gave the unions their long-awaited demand, one that the Weimar unions were never able to pull off, a National Labor Day, May 1, 1933. March 24th, 1933 is when Hitler officially gained dictatorial power.

About Me

Actor, Casting Director, Director, Broadcaster, Writer, Singer, Artistic
Director, Dramatur, Producer, Professor, Coach, Husband, Grandfather, Marketing
Professional and life long student Art Lynch joined the staff of John Robert
Powers in 1999. Lynch is also an adjunct professor at the Community College of
Southern Nevada, the Morning Edition Weekend Host for Nevada Public Radio and
one of 67 individuals who represent 126,000 actors as a member of the Board of
Directors of the Screen Actors Guild. He is the past president of the Nevada
Branch of the Screen Actors Guild and of the Professional Audio/Visual Communications
Association. A resident of Nevada since 1984, Lynch has an MA in Communications
from UNLV and a BA in Theater, Speech and Mass Communications from the
University of Illinois, Chicago. He is currently pursuing post-graduate studies
in theater, education and the entertainment industry. Art Lynch studied and
practiced the craft of acting in Chicago and California before settling in
Nevada. With his wife Laura, Art owned and operated a successful marketing
company with national clientele. Art was personally responsible for casting and
directing over 1,000 commercials and industrials, as well as assisting on film
and television projects in many ways. His career also includes earning awards
as a wire service, magazine and broadcast journalist. He is most proud,
however, of his daughters. Ann is a PhD in neuroscience and Beth is the proud
mother of his grandchildren, Evan and Elijah.

Short Film Festival

DISCLAIMER

The resources listed herein are posted for informational purposes only. The authors of this blog are not affiliated with, nor do they endorse, sponsor or guarantee any of the above resources or any of the information, advice, services or other resources obtained through these resources. All information and content on this blog is for informational purposed only and not to be taken as legally vetted journalism or endorsed in any way by the authors of this blog, the Screen Actors Guild, College of Southern Nevada, Casting Call Entertainment, Boulder City Parks and Recreation or any other entity implied or mentioned on this blog. No guarantee of any kind is made as to the accuracy or suitability of these resources or the qualifications of any companies or individuals affiliated with them.